Tuesday, 3:17p.m. A 25-toncargo truck struck a car in front of it near Cheongju IC on the downbound Gyeongbu Expressway. The driver fell asleep and died.
Three weeks after the accident, the safety manager of the trucking company, the CEO, and the management of the logistics subsidiary of the original contractor, a large conglomerate, are each notified of a prosecutor's investigation. The safety manager said.
"Why should our CEO be investigated because the driver fell asleep?"
After the enforcement of the Fatal Accidents Act in January2022, and its expansion to workplaces with five or more full-time workers in January 2024, the answer to this question has clearly changed.
If a fatal accident occurs in a cargo operation, the person in charge may be subject to criminal penalties. And the penalty is not determined by "who was driving" but by "does the person in chargehave a record of fulfilling the obligation to ensure safety and health".
In this article, we'll focus on three of the most common questions safety management teams are confused about.
1. Is my company subject to the OSHA?
2. What incidents qualify as "major industrial accidents"?
3. What do I need to do now to prepare?
There are two paths to coverage under the Act: major industrial accidents and major civil accidents. The most common application for freight forwarding is a major industrial accident.
| Category | Serious Industrial Accidents | Serious Public Accidents |
|---|---|---|
| Scope of Application | Workers at the workplace (employees, branch staff, subcontractor workers, etc.) | Accidents involving raw materials, products, public-use facilities, or public transportation affecting citizens |
| Relevance to Freight Transport | Driver fatalities, loading/unloading worker accidents, etc. | Public harm caused by hazardous material transport accidents, etc. |
| Criteria | 1 or more fatalities, 2 or more people requiring treatment for over 6 months, or 3 or more occupational disease cases caused by the same hazard | 1 or more fatalities, or 10 or more people requiring treatment for over 2 months, etc. |
| Penalty | Responsible manager: imprisonment for 1 year or more, or a fine of up to KRW 1 billion | Same |
One thing to note - many safety management teams mistakenly believe that "we are different from manufacturing because we only transport goods," but the law does not make this distinction. What the law looks for is "is therea workplace with 5 or more full-time workers" and "is aworker killed?"
As of January 27, 2024, the Fatal Accident Punishment Act was expanded to cover workplaces with more than 5 full-time workers and less than 50 full-time workers. This means that most domestic freight forwarders are now covered.
According to Statistics Korea, the vast majority of domestic freight forwarding businesses are small and medium-sized, and most of them were not covered before 2024, but this is different now.
This means that it's realistic to assume that almost every truck driver reading this is covered.
This is the most common question we hear in the field, and the answer is clear.
Drivers are included in the definition of "workers" under the Act.
According toArticle 2 ofthe Act, a worker includes "any person who provides labor for compensation for the purpose of carrying on a business." Although a driver is a sole proprietor, he or she may be recognized as a worker if he or she provides labor under the direction and managementof a specific transportation company.
In practice, the DOL's interpretation is based on "theactual structure of the work performance rather than the form of the contract." In other words, if the driver receives dispatching instructions from the company, drives a company-branded vehicle, and reports to the company's system, the driver is likely to be considered an employee - even though he or she is technically an outsider.
We'll cover this in more depth in our next installment, "Managing for-hire vehicles, who's responsible for accidents?".
The Fatal Accidents Act does not punish a manager just because there is an accident. The law only asks one question.
"Did the manager fulfill his obligation to ensure safety and health, and is there a record of it?"
If they have fulfilled this obligation, they may be exempt from or have their penalties reduced, even if an accident occurs. Conversely, if they have neglected their duties, they will be penalized regardless of whether the driver was directly at fault.
The statute and implementing regulations can be summarized as follows:
| Obligation Area | Specific Requirements in the Freight Transportation Industry |
|---|---|
| (1) Establishment of Safety and Health Management System | Dedicated safety management organization, designation of a safety officer, allocation of a safety budget |
| (2) Identification and Improvement of Hazards and Risks | Regular inspections at least once every six months, analysis of risky driving patterns, vehicle inspections |
| (3) Inspection of Compliance with Safety and Health Obligations | Verification of driver training completion, driving records, and history of risky behavior detection |
| (4) Safety and Health Measures for Outsourcing and Contracting | Evaluation of safety capabilities of branches and partner companies, estimation of safety management costs |
Applying these four to the realities of trucking, the questions a safety management team leader must answer are
- Does each driver have a history of risky driving behavior (drowsiness, failure to look ahead, speeding, etc.)?
- Is there a historyof what they did when they saw signs of danger ?
- Do you inspect and supervisethe level of safety management of your drivers and contractors?
- Does the company automatically accumulate records of dangerous events such as blind spots, lanedepartures, and sudden braking?
If you can't answer "yes, we have documentation"to these four questions, it's hard to avoid a finding of "management failed to fulfill its obligations"in the event of an accident.
The difference between these three scenarios boils down to one question.
It's not "does the system exist", but "is there a record of the system actually working and being acted upon"?
Because of their size, height, and blind spot structure, large freight trucks are far more likely to cause fatal outcomes when an accident occurs. According to the Samsung Traffic Safety Research Institute, the fatality rate in right-turn pedestrian accidents involving large freight trucks is 28 times higher than that of passenger cars.
From the perspective of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act, this carries important implications. When a blind spot accident occurs, a key criterion in determining whether the company has fulfilled its duty is whether it recognized the risk of blind spots and took preventive measures.
Simply installing cameras is not enough. The argument that “the company did its part because it installed cameras” will not hold up in court. What the law looks at is whether the risk was detected, whether action was taken, and whether there is a record of it. For a more detailed discussion of the difference between blind spot cameras and AI detection, see Is Installing a Blind Spot Camera on a Freight Truck Enough? (https://mobility.aimatics.ai/blog/truck-blind-spot-camera-vs-ai-detection).
As noted earlier, owner-operator drivers may still be recognized as workers if they are effectively under the company’s direction and control. This means that management can also bear responsibility for fulfilling workplace safety and health obligations in relation to accidents involving owner-operator drivers.
The problem is that many freight carriers treat owner-operator drivers as “outsiders” and exclude them from their safety management systems. In many cases, there is no record of risky driving monitoring, training, or retraining for these drivers. If an accident occurs, this gap can immediately become grounds for penalizing the responsible manager.
Under the structure of the safe freight rate system, long-haul and overnight driving are often unavoidable in the freight transportation industry. This creates structural conditions that lead to drowsy driving and accumulated fatigue.
From the perspective of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act, this is considered a foreseeable risk. In other words, the argument that “this is just how the industry works” is not a valid defense. On the contrary, it may become an aggravating factor: if the risk was foreseeable, why was there no system in place to address it?
This checklist isn't just for reference; these are the items that are actually looked at in court to determine if you've fulfilled your duty. If you answered "don't know" or "none" to any of these questions, it's time to start preparing
| No. | Checklist | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Are there records of detected risky driving behaviors by driver (e.g., drowsiness, forward inattention, speeding)? | ☐ |
| 2 | When a risk warning occurs, are the actions taken automatically recorded? | ☐ |
| 3 | Are the same safety management standards applied to contracted drivers and partner companies? | ☐ |
| 4 | Are driving risk events such as blind spots, lane departure, and sudden braking automatically collected? | ☐ |
| 5 | Is the status of safety management regularly reported to management? | ☐ |
If you have less than three "yes" answers out of five, you'll have a hard time arguing that you fulfilled your duty to ensure health and safety in the event of an accident.
The most common oversight in real-world freight operations is not the lack of a system, but the lack of a record.
"We took care of it" doesn't count in court - what counts is objective data with dates, who was responsible, andwhat was done.
While many companies consider dashcams to be a safety management tool, they are not "evidence" for the purposes of the OSHA.
All they record is "what happened". What the law requires is "how did you manage it before it happened?" The two are completely different.
What you need is a system that does three things simultaneously
A.I.Matics' AIDis more than just a safety device that prevents accidents, it provides a data-driven system for freight forwarders to actually fulfill and prove their legal obligations.
1. Real-time detection of risky behaviors with on-device AI
2. Risk detection → warning → action history automatically recorded
3. Driver scoring provides evidence for improvement measures
4. Proven cost-saving effect
In other words, AID is a structure that reduces accidents while automatically accumulating "records of fulfillment of management responsibility obligations" required by law.
To summarize what we have seen so far
After the expansion in January 2024, most freight drivers will be subject to the Fatal Accident Punishment Act. In the event of a fatal accident, the person in charge of management may be subject to penalties, and the penalty is determined not by whether the driver is "at fault" but by whether the person in charge has a record of fulfilling the obligation to secure safety and health.
And this "record" means the history of the system's operation, detection, and action,not its installation.
Every freight operator should be thinking about two things simultaneously
Only when you have established a system that does both, will you be able to fulfill your obligation to secure safety and health.
Based on the five checklists in this article, you can check the current level of your company and the points that need to be improved. We will provide you with specific preparation directions and improvement guides based on cargo operation cases through consultation.
Request a consultation on responding to the Act
This article is intended to provide general information, and we recommend that you consult with an expert for specific legal advice. The application and interpretation of the law may vary depending on individual cases.